THE \YESTERI\ MEDITERR\NEAI\ KINGDOMS 1~00-1'1011and yet Robert had managed to remain master of himself,
an influential, agile and able politician who deserves his
sobriquet 'The Wise'.THE CRUSADE AGAINST SICILY
To understand Robert's lack of enthusiasm for some of
John XXII's north Italian schemes it is necessary to consider
the king's other preoccupations. Sicily, above all, demanded
attention, for King Frederick had allied himself to Ludwig
and the Ghibellines; moreover, Frederick broke the terms
of the treaty of Caltabellotta in 1320 by naming his son
Peter as his heir, since the island was supposed to go after
his death to the Angevin king. In addition, the successors of
James II of Aragon gave open support to Frederick of Sicily
from the 1330s onwards. Thus the years of the Bohemian
entry into Italy saw an intensification of Robert's struggle
for dominion over Sicily; between 1330 and 1343 six Angevin
expeditions were launched against Frederick and his heirs.
There were striking successes in the short term, such as the
capture of a castle at Palermo and of Milazzo, near the straits
of Messina; in 1346, three years after Robert's death, Milazzo
was in fact permanently occupied, but during his lifetime
none of the conquests lasted long and they could not even
be used to force the Aragonese into negotiation?^1 The fail-
ure of the expeditions is all the more surprising since the
Sicilian nobility was deeply divided between two factions,
the 'Catalans' and the 'Latins'; there were even defections
to the court of Naples, such as that of Giovanni Chiaramonte,
a very illustrious nobleman who acquired from Robert what
proved to be an empty title: vicar-general for Sicily. However,
the accession of a child king in Sicily, Louis or Lodovico, in
1342 and the rebellion of the 'Latins' against the new regent
brought no permanent Angevin success.
The Sicilian crusade was presented as the essential prelim-
inary to a crusade to the East; and the Angevins continued
to take seriously their duties in the east. There were a few
Neapolitan ships in the expedition to Smyrna, on the coast
of what is now Turkey, in 1337; this region had become
- Leonard, Anf!:ioini, pp. 409-13.